Tax Cases

Three federal trial-level courts have jurisdiction over tax disputes: the United States Tax Court, the United States District Courts, and the United States Court of Federal Claims. The United States Courts of Appeals are generally the highest appellate-level courts to hear tax cases because the United States Supreme Court hears very few tax cases.

Locating Tax Cases That Relate to a Specific Code Section, Topic, CFR Part, or IRS Document

By Code Section:

• Looseleaf Services such as the Standard Federal Tax Reporter and the United States Tax Reporter contain case annotations for code sections.
• Annotated codes such as the U.S.C.A., the U.S.C.S. and the US Code platform of the Encyclopedia have case annotations beneath the text of the code section.
• KeyCite on Westlaw and Shepard’s on Lexis provide case citations for cases that cite a code section. Click here for information on how to use KeyCite and Shepard’s with code citations.
  Shepard’s Federal Tax Citator (KF 6280.5.S46) lists cases that discuss a particular code section. Like other works in the Shepard’s series, it provides citations and treatment codes but no summaries of cases.
• Search in an online source, such as a combined tax database on Westlaw (FTX-CSRELS or FTX-CS) or Lexis (FEDTAX;CASREL or FEDTAX;CASES), for tax cases by using the code section as the search term. Remember to limit the search by date and jurisdiction as dictated by the parameters of your assignment.

By Topic:

• Use looseleaf services such as the Standard Federal Tax Reporter or the United States Tax Reporter to find cases by topic.
• Use a combined tax database on Westlaw (FTX-CSRELS or FTX-CS), Lexis (FEDTAX;CASREL or FEDTAX;CASES), CCH Tax Research NetWork (U.S. Tax Cases) or RIA Checkpoint (Federal Tax Cases) and search using keywords.

By CFR Part:

• Use looseleaf services such as the Standard Federal Tax Reporter or the United States Tax Reporter to find cases by CFR Part.
• Use KeyCite on Westlaw to find cases that cite or discuss a CFR Part. Click here for information on using KeyCite with regulations.
• Use one of the tax databases listed above and use the CFR citation as your search term.

By IRS Document:

• You can Shepardize or KeyCite certain officially published IRS documents such as Private Letter Rulings, Technical Advice Memoranda and Revenue Rulings.
• For a document that is not covered by Shepard’s, the best option is to search online in a large tax database by using the proper citation for the document in quotes as your search term.
• Looseleaf services, such as the Standard Federal Tax Reporter or the United States Tax Reporter, provide finding lists of some officially published IRS documents in their citator volumes. You can also use their online counterparts, CCH Tax Research NetWork and RIA Checkpoint, to locate cases through the “Check Citator” feature and the “Citator 2nd” feature under Find by Citation, respectively.

U.S. Tax Cases (Publication)

About U.S. Tax Cases: publication of Commerce Clearing House. Includes decisions of U.S. District Courts, U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and Court of Appeals.

Updating and Validating Tax Cases

To ensure that a tax case is still valid and remains authoritative, and to find cases that cite a tax case, use Shepard’s on Lexis or KeyCite on Westlaw. Click here for more information on using Shepard’s and KeyCite. You can also use the “Check Citator” feature on CCH Tax Research NetWork or the “Citator 2nd” feature under Find by Citation within RIA Checkpoint.

Although we recommend using online sources such as Shepard’s or KeyCite for updating, there are also several print citators available for tax cases. Shepard’s produces the Federal Tax Citator and several looseleaf publishers produce citators as well:

• Shepard’s Federal Tax Citator. You can find citing references to federal tax cases as well as the following documents: Treasury Decisions, many IRS documents, the Internal Revenue Code, and the Code of Federal Regulations. It also provides parallel cites to the USTC and the AFTR.
• Federal Taxes Citator by RIA. Cases are listed alphabetically by the taxpayer’s last name and not arranged by citation.
• The Federal Taxes Citator provides treatment codes, as well as the syllabus numbers of the cited case. The citing cases are arranged by the syllabus numbers of the cited case, then by rank of citing court, and then in chronological order. It indicates acquiescence or non-acquiescence by the IRS and includes IRS pronouncements as citing material.
• Citator Volumes of the Standard Federal Tax Reporter. These volumes are not very useful because there are no treatment codes. In addition, the citation is to the first page of the case and not to where the citing language appears. Once you have found your case and looked at the list of citing cases, you must also check the current Case Table and the Latest Additions to the Case Table located in volume 19.

Citing Tax Cases with Bluebook

See Bluebook Rule 14.5.3 and Rule 10.2 for information on how to cite tax cases. Examples:

• Benson v. Commissioner, 80 T.C. 789 (1983).
• Price v. Commissioner, 46 T.C.M. (CCH) 657 (1983)